Freesnarko pt. 287564: The Life Coaches
Like we always do about this time:
With the playoffs ever so near, Bethlehem Shoals, Brown Recluse Esq., and yours truly have taken it upon ourselves to soundtrack each series for you, providing an appropriate backdrop tailor-suited to the intricacies of each 15-on-15 best of seven matchup. Hours upon hours of archival research were performed in order to select the ideal accompaniments for each showdown. We hope you find these appropriate, and feel free to give your suggestions below.
EASTERN CONFERENCE
Pistons/Bucks: The Band w/ Allen Toussaint - King Harvest (live)
Solid, ethical, perhaps a touch of austerity, but never without that snap of vitality. That's the impossible-to-sink, impossible-to-love, impossible-to-vanquish life force of these two teams, as they bring just a touch of swagger to the faceless grind, and tight-lipped desperation, of the Rust Belt. No Toussaint would be like this series without Sheed or Mo Williams.
Heat/Bulls: Prodigy – Keep it Thoro
The beat is Miami, looming larger than life, capable of swallowing whole its counterpart. Perhaps too well-crafted and too clean. Mundane for brief periods with spontaneous awe-inducement. The counterpart, obviously, is Prodigy: The Bulls. No-nonsense and capable of an unparalleled stupidity, used to his/its advantage. Durable, not very well-tested, but capable. Knowing.
Nets/Pacers: Neil Young - F*!#in' Up
Both the Nets' late season surge and the Pacers' solid .500 season amidst turmoil were about as expected as the grizzled Canadian rocker releasing a totally vital album in 1990, on the eve of grunge. The riffs evoke Indiana's hard-nosed approach, while the whiny voice is all Vince. This song and this series are about redemption. Maybe Vince will trade in the headband for a bandana for just one game.
Cavs/Wizards: John Coltrane w/ Eric Dolphy - Chasin' the Trane (live)
You heard it at FreeDarko first: BASKETBALL IS NOT JAZZ. But if you think for a second that this isn't going to stir in me feelings left untended since I first heard this (age 14, for the record), I hate you, reader. Pure, destructive, explosive ecstatsy, with a definite eye toward ultimate spiritual fulfillment. For Gilbert and LeBron, too. Sidenote: VAREJAO IS ELVIN JONES.
WESTERN CONFERENCE
Suns/Lakers: Giorgio Moroder - Lost Angeles
When not torching Italian League nets in the '70s and '80s (and also serving as a young Kobe's hoops idol), Mike D'Antoni was getting live in the clubs to shit like this. Moroder's future sound is the perfect match for the uptempo Suns offense, and there's enough quirkiness for a series that involves a Marx-reading Canadian, a Zen-practicing hippie coach, TWO Frenchmen, an Italian-reared American superstar, and a guy named Smush. And if "Lost Angeles" doesn't sum up Kobe's career to this point, I don't know what does.
Mavs/Grizzlies: Dan Penn - Nobody's Fool
Country meets country, as two hard-headed, nonsenseless squads collide in a battle trimmed with respect. Sustaining the respect of others, respect for thy neighbor, and most of all, too much self-respect to ever whine about it. And at the center of it all, Dirk vs. Pao, an Aryan/Mediterrainian showdown that, like Angie Harmon versus Kathy Bates, should teach us some hard truths about who most closely clutchs EuroBall's roots between his thumbs.
Spurs/Kings: Serge Gainsbourg – En Melody
The musical manifestation of the French (Tony Parker) confronting the hardness of it all (Mike Bibby). The chaos you hear in the background is a certain R. Artest, ready to open the MIND of Shareef Abdur Rahim and take him on a magical tour through playoff intrigue and desire. The pace of this series will be quick, its peaks notable, its end, ultimately uncertain.
Clippers/Nuggets: Nirvana – Serve the Servants
Less climactic than we all want (and hope it to be) but nonetheless a classic in its own right. A depressing rejoice, both a lamentation of prior futility and future promise (but to where?). Ghosts linger. A grand opening to an event of both pain and laughing at pain, while denying pain ever existed. Cassell has a touch of Albini to him, righting the ship, finessing the early work of championship-caliber teams, and turning already established stallions into contenders.
posted by Dr. Lawyer IndianChief @ 4/21/2006 12:54:00 AM
26 comments
26 Comments:
Wizards vs. Cavs - And then What? - Young Jeezy. Not that Das Bron or Gil are dealing in the white, but who else around here is going to stack their flow?
with that moroder, you hit on why i'm not into this year's suns. there's something effete about that team, whereas during the 2005 playoffs i would ride around listening to "i'm a bad man" on repeat after watching the suns
that pistons/band marriage could be its own academic sub-discipline. Big Ben and Levon, Dumars as Ronnie Hawkins, and is it just me or does Rip Hamilton actually LOOK like Richard Manuel in addition to playing like him.
(ps: Reggie Workman = Etan Thomas)
since i doubt he'll ever cop to it, i want to make ungraciously known that last night, the recluse and i had a brief conversation about this during which he uttered the following gem:
"melo is more archie shepp."
free jazz/nba analogies are the last gasp or final frontier, depending on your thinking
let me provide a little more context. i was saying that if lebron is coltrane, and you wanted another horn player to represent arenas, dolphy is the only choice. i briefly considered shepp, but concluded that melo is way more shepp than arenas.
is wade marion brown?
you heard it hear first. BASKETBALL IS NOT JAZZ.
FEEL my recently added Cassell/Albini comparison.
it all comes 'round: manu is mike osborne, dirk is john surman
Speaking of Jazz, is it just me, or does anyone else hear Ace of Base playing when Kirilenko steps on the court? Not that he's Playoff-bound, just that's the music that seems to capture his essence, which for him, preceeds existence.
ace of base is probably the best case scenario for what masha lopatova's music sounds like.
i am really going to calm down on this frantic commenting since i most death have more important shit to do. . and it pains me to big-up anything having to do with the discipline of philosophy. but ml, good looking on ak's essence preceding his existence. along these lines, odom's existence precedes his essence, that's the whole problem and his lasting appeal, etc.
simmons post today is pearl jam vs. the nba playoffs. i'm glad he's back to writing about stuff he knows, instead of trying to fake it with current pop culture.
very solid, but i just can't see basketball being played to driving italo unless the lane is angular.
And may i suggest, as a counterpoint to the assertion that basketball isn't jazz (which has been discussed in depth before, so I won't belabor it):
Feels So Good- Grover Washington
what a way to meet in the middle.
Jason Terry is Gene Ammons.
Shaq is all the guys from the Bar-Kays that died.
Strong work, fellas. I like the Gainsbourg pick. As does De La Soul. Catch me?
As to b. shoals comment about the suns being "effete," i think that's the perfect word to describe them. It's gone from being fun, to being way too much like watching a soccer game.
It seems people are talking about the phoenix/la matchup as basically kobe vs. the suns (such as simmons with his pearl jam 5-to-1 lyrics). but the defining story of this series has got to be marion vs. bryant. i think the matrix should have been at least mentioned in the defensive player of the year discussions (3rd in rebounds, 5th in steals, #8 pf in blocks), but the suns lack of team defense effectively kept him out of the discussion.
i watch mostly boston games, and i can say without reservation that marion played the best defense on paul pierce of anyone this season. pierce looked good versus almost anyone else, but marion absolutely shatted on him—not just shutting him down, but embarassing him. i don't know if there is anyone i would pick before marion to stop kobe, and that includes both bowen and artest, who simply don't have the speed/size combo that marion does. as long as d'antoni does what should and puts marion on bryant, this is the one-one-one matchup i am most looking forward to by a long shot.
for anyone who doesn't remember how bananas the 2005 playoffs were: anyone remember t-mac reborn as a nightmare defender?
also in my research for this post, i was reminded that nowitzki finished third in the mvp race last year. so maybe it's not so unlikely/so now-or-never
long-time, first-time, etc.......would like to say that after reading Simmons' playoff preview, I can only thank FD for a Peal-Jam free soundtrack....could there be a worse lyricist than Eddie Vedder? guy makes Jim Morrison look like Arthur Rimbaud....
I normally don't comment on Simmons (he still makes me laugh occasionally, and he still seems excited by his job), but the Pearl Jam thing just didn't work. I'm a big Pearl Jam fan (I sit on their side of the fence in the Seattle grunge dispute), but, well, it left me cold. Anon says he's the worst lyricist and all, but I think that's just when divorced from the music. Still, NBA to PJ... it just doesn't work. What next, comparing players to Emo bands?
Intriguing fodder for a Friday, the Day Before and all. What about Detroit as the basie band? Rasheed as Pres, Rip as Buck Clayton. It works for me. McDyess has to be Jimmy Rushing.
The emo sidebar also has potential: Peja lip-synching to Bright Eyes brings a smile to this tired face.
Varajao is Elvin Jones?! What my fuckin fuck? Oscar Schmidt wasn't even Elvin Jones! Sideshow V is a subway djembe player, let alone Joey Baron.
yeah e jones would be a shoot first point guard that still manages to run his team. a flashier billups? tim hardaway? isiah?
and while i'm enjoying lebron as coltrane, eric dolphy is was too contemplative for kobe. you need someone more forceful. some sort of asshole. miles is the obvious choice. but he's a little too self aware and measured. miles knows he's a dick. kobe is so far gone, he thinks he's doing the right thing. he's completely discarded every established tenet of team basketball and it's working.
kobe is ornette coleman.
great song btw.
Before this discussion of music and the NBA drops off the front page, can someone help me understand the series of associations that led the programmers at ABC to play Tom Petty leading into commercial breaks during at least the Cavs-Wiz game? Anyone?
it's too early for a 'won't back down' scenario, so my guess is it was a 'don't come around here no more' reference to Larry Hughes and the Wizards.
but then, we're talking ABC, NBA and music, and no logic applies, save that you can bet on 'hey ya' being the only hiphop song they'd dream of playing. this will still be true in 2016.
word verification: woskgso
np: Mike Ladd- takes more than 41
hey u know the song being played in the nba playoff? i think its a rap song, i luv the song, u know the title? in the nba playoff 2006 when they getting commercial!
If you are talking about TNT and the Suns, it's Fort Minor- "Remember the Name"
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